Is the WRHA getting cold feet on closing more hospitals?

The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority is delaying the release of plans on when they're expected to shut down Concordia Hospital and close the emergency room at Seven Oaks Hospital.

The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority has delayed its decision – again – on when it plans to shut down Concordia Hospital and close the emergency room at Seven Oaks Hospital.

Are they getting cold feet?

The WRHA had said earlier this year that Manitobans would know by late March or early April when the second phase of its hospital consolidation plan would be unveiled. But a spokesperson for the WRHA now says it will be several more weeks before any announcement is made.

“We are working on a final timeline for Phase 2 changes but expect it will be several weeks more until we’re able to share a definitive schedule for that work,” WRHA spokesperson Bronwyn Penner-Holigroski said in a statement.

As part of its clinical consolidation plan, the WRHA last year closed Misericordia Urgent Care Centre and turned the emergency room at Victoria Hospital into an urgent care centre. The second phase of the plan, which was originally slated to begin in the spring or summer of this year, has been pushed back until sometime next year. After the release of a wait-time reduction task force report in December – which found the WRHA had not properly prepared for its consolidation plans – health officials took a step back and agreed to re-assess projected patient flow numbers. They also agreed not to make changes at Concordia and Seven Oaks at the same time and said they would ensure the three hospitals expected to remain open as acute care hospitals – St. Boniface Hospital, Health Sciences Centre and Grace Hospital – had sufficient added capacity to handle increased patient volumes. They also pushed back full implementation of Phase 2 until sometime in 2019. In other words, despite assurances a year ago they had done their due diligence to move forward with both phases of the plan, it turns out they hadn’t their homework at all.

In fact, it remains unclear whether a newly expanded emergency room at Grace Hospital and expansions at St. Boniface will be enough to handle the massive influx of patients expected at those facilities once Concordia closes and Seven Oaks no longer takes high acuity patients.

“It remains our priority to make these changes as deliberately and thoughtfully as possible,” said Penner-Holigroski. “Our priority is patient care and patient safety and it is imperative that we make our changes with those priorities in mind rather than rushing our timeline forward.”

ER data across all sites shows wait times were down slightly over the winter compared to the same months the previous year. However, there have been troubling signs that show wait times are on their way up again. ER wait times have increased every month since the first phase of consolidation was launched in October. And worse, length-of-stay wait times for admitted patients – the amount of time it takes for patients who require hospitalization to get a bed – have skyrocketed at Grace Hospital. Length-of-stay wait times are the main driver behind hospital and ER overcrowding. When admitted patients begin piling up in ERs because they can’t get beds, the entire system backs up. And that’s what the WRHA is still trying to solve before it closes Concordia Hospital and downsizes Seven Oaks.

“We remain on track right now with work taking place at St. Boniface’s ED which will help to inform some of our scheduling going forward,” said Penner-Holigroski. “We also are on track to open the new ED at the Grace Hospital later this spring which will be the first change of Phase 2 to affect patients.”

But all that is going to depend on what the wait time numbers look like. If they continue to show signs of weakness, there could be even further delays, and maybe even an entire rethink of the plan.

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